Once a fan of PHC, I fell away, for a variety of reasons that I won't go into right now.

That said, I still felt the pang of panic when I heard of his stroke. Let me explain.

My paternal grandfather suffered through a series of strokes until the final one took him off this mortal coil in the summer of 1973. The effects of those shook my father to his core.

Then, that coming winter, as we later pieced together, my father had a series of TIAs or mini-strokes. He hid it from Mom and swore my brother to secretcy when he noticed it. However, they kept on and Dad, picturing grandfather's experience, seems to have seen his own fate.

(TBC)

As best we can tell, as his plastics business was failing due to the first oil crisis, Dad had another TIA episode.

I can only imagine that this big, strong guy who always made it a point to be the provider, the protector, the bulwark of his family, a guy who saw it as his duty to protect and care for his family, could not countenance being reduced to a near vegetable as his father. It was not for him to be the invalid, the near brain dead vegetable.

So, that one snowy night, almost 36 years ago, he penned a desperate holographic will, went out in that snowy January night, had a last cigarette, then stuck the barrel of a 10 guage shotgun in his right ear and pulled the trigger.

I found his body the next morning. He was dead at 48.

I'm 60 now. I was 24 then.

Strokes flat out scare the shit out of me to this day. Bless you, Garrison. You survived. I hope to God you live a long life.

Hell, I'd even record it on DVD.

I nearly missed your appearance on the National Geographic Channel's 9/11 program. Frankly, I think they gave you short shrift and not enough of a chance to do your stuff. Then again, the whole show was ridiculously weak, managing to almost make the 9/11 conspiracy nuts' arguments seem reasonable, even though they are not.

I could see your series using animation to illustrate many of your technical points, like wind shear, lift and such. It could be great. Hope you find someone to run with it.

One of my regrets in life is that I didn't get to know most of my uncles growing up, as my family moved from Illinois (and almost all of our relatives) to Florida when I was ten.

My the time we moved back to the Midwest, just as I was finishing college, one of them had died and the others were in decline. I never got to know them in their prime, especially my Uncle Stan, the successful inventor.

You were damn lucky Keith.